Tools Featured in this Teardown

Video Overview

Learn how to repair your Xbox One S with this video overview.

Introduction

Today a new Xbox lands in our inbox, and that's a rare thing—though not as rare as it used to be. What makes the new Xbox One S a worthy mid-cycle update to Microsoft's console? Let's tear down this surprisingly slimmer, possibly speedier, appreciably sassier Xbox One and find out. Game on!

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Etched into the starboard side of the Xbox One S, we find a cute reminder that this console still hails from the other tech capital of the West Coast: "Hello from Seattle," home of the Microsoft brigade.

Moving right along, we discover the Xbox One S is now identified as Model 1681.

In a design decision that takes us back to consoles of old, this One features mechanical buttons in lieu of capacitive ones.

The horror, it's just a cut-cost version from the original. No tactile buttons because the ISD chip is missing. No power-up tunes or speaker for the same reason. The shielded connector is replaced by a cheap generic one.

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The next to go is number two: the optical drive—too easy! Master Chief is of course along for the ride.

Here we have the artist formally known as a BD-ROM drive, courtesy of Philips and Lite-On Digital Solutions. The DG-6M5S model found in the Xbox One S is slightly different from the DG-6M1S found in the Xbox One, with the biggest upgrade being support for BD-UHD.

We also snag a couple rubber bumpers. These probably help keep the high-speed optical drive from rattling us off our rockers.

For the size of the case that is one big heatsink and fan. Hopefully it allows the One S to operate fairly quietly. It's kind of ridiculous how much smaller the PS4 compared to the original Xbox One especially when you factor in the external power supply, but the PS4 does run very hot and loud compared to the One.

The problem with the PS4 is it might be thin but its really too deep. I find it really hard to fit on my shelf and I would have preferred it to be twice as tall and an inch or too less deep. It would also have helped fit a larger fan I expect.

I didn't like the original Xbox One especially the external PSU, but it looks like the S is a very nice refined design.

Can someone tell me the thickness of the fan? I know its 120mm wide, but I want to try to replace it with a PC fan with some modding. also, I see its a PWM 4-pin fan, which is good, but will it run any old fan?

Any chance you could give a measurement of the dimensions of the "X949211-001 DG4001FYG87IA "? I'm trying to get a good idea of how big the shrink was (the last one was 363 mm2). I'm hoping the changes didn't add many transistors since I do already have a source for that info on the original (I think it was ~5 billion though obviously there's some rounding).

With regards to the "Inside, it's largely the same design" comment. I've had two original controllers and an Elite controller that developed left stick drift. Are the joystick boxes any different in the One S controller or are they the same crappy part? TIA.

47 Comments

My question is whether the SATA controller on the motherboard is a SATA III interface; the tear down guide (which is great btw!) only mentions that the 2TB hard drive itself is SATA III. According to the Xbox One (original) tear down guide and this tear down guide, both the Xbox One and Xbox One S use the same south bridge; which would imply that the Xbox One S is only capable of SATA II speeds, regardless of the fact it holds a SATA III drive.

It hardly matters; no HDD is going to get anywhere near the limits of the SATA II bus, let alone the SATA III bus. You need a seriously fast SSD to start seeing a difference there, and AFAICT the XBone's OS isn't set up to do TRIM, which would limit the lifespan.

I can confirm it will work. I have the original model Xbox One and put a 2TB hard drive in there, no issues. It's not even as hard as these guys make it sound. You just plug your original hard drive into a computer and make an image of it ("dd" style image, I use Win32DiskImager on Windows for it), then write the image back to your new drive.

If the new drive is larger (which is generally the whole point), boot up GParted and enlarge the data partition. They are all NTFS, no proprietary stuff like the 360. Worked first try.

I used this tutorial when I changed my Xbox One's 500gb hard drive to a Seagate 1tb sshd hybrid drive(Pretty much the same disk that MS use in Xbox One elite console). I would recommend this operation to everyone who fully understand the instructions and are willing to sacrifice the warranty.

There is one thing that is not clear to me about this teardown. Does the One S motherboard have a SATA3 port or is it only the Seagate HDD that has the SATA3 port? Also, the controller was dismissed as being the same, but it's definitely not the same as the original Xbox One controller from 2013. It has a headphone jack, Bluetooth, different bumpers, and a textured grip.

so it has a separate wifi N chip for the controllers? that explains why they need a separate proprietary adaptor for pc use, also using SATA II while having usb 3 is pretty odd, not to mention this thing seems to be at least on par with modern 2013 APU systems, now down to 16nm, the psu is a lot smaller it seems it barely uses half the wattage of before thanks to the process shrink

Just wanted to know the plastic is painted white or some kind of coating? Because when I recieved mine it had what appeared to be a hair that was stuck into the front next to the eject button going inside of the disc slot.Or it could of been a plastic burr from manufacturing it. At first I thought it was a crack but upon further inspection with a light I noticed it was a hair stuck into the surface texture of the front console. When I removed it a light line was left. It drives me nuts and only I can motice it from about 3 inches away. Wanted to know if it could be painted to match. Or should I just get over it. Thanks

You may be right. Samsung lists these chips as "gDDR3" (as opposed to GDDR3)—but if you read the fine print, it's not categorized as GDDR3 but rather SDDR3 SDRAM. It's possible Samsung is muddying the waters by using a product name with a lower case "g" that has nothing to do with the GDDR3 standard.

Thanks to you guys I dared to open my noisy little X-Box and plant a PC fan in it. The noisiest part since is the new 2 TB HDD which I installed while the case was open. Pictures here: https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ap7h5FFmvMougR0R5fCx...

No it doesn't. I had to cut the connector off of the original PC fan and the X-Box fan and reconnect them with 3M Scotchlok connectors. Since I am not an expert technician I simply guessed that it would be a standard PWM fan with a proprietary connector. After cutting the cables I connected the X-Box connector to the Noctua fan cables in the same order they left the fan motor of the X-Box fan (from left to right: Noctua: black, ye, gr, blue; X-Box all black). I hope you get what I am trying to say here, since English isnt my first language. I've played for a few hours since and I have no (heat) problems whatsoever.

Hi, I'm trying to decide whether or not to upgrade from the Xbox one, my main consideration is whether the 4k upscaling capabilities in the One S is superior to the Sony 4k processor X1 found in my TV (Sony KD55X8005CBU (SD:2).

I'm not concerned with HDR at the moment as my TV does not support it. I was looking for the "bit" in the Xbox one S teardown that's responsible for the upscaling so I could compare it, but after reading this I'm one the wiser :( Please don't take that the wrong way, it's not a criticism of the article, which I enjoyed it more than I thought possible from a tear down write up. Kind regards.

I've thought about replacing the internal HDD with an SSD to improve speed of the console and especially loading times of games. After I saw good youtube reviews of people using external SSDs attached via USB 3.0 I changed my mind and I added also an external SSD to my Xbox One S. I used "Samsung Extreme 500" SSD with a capacity of 240 GB (which is working fine even it shows only 230 usable in Xbox menu). Speed has increased! :-)